Thursday, March 31, 2016

Yes,
Kentucky is ground zero for the prescription and illegal drug crisis.
But Longman doesn't understand why: It's because KASPER forces doctors
to deny painkilling drugs to their patients in chronic pain, who thus
in desperation turn to heroin. The heroin epidemic exploded in direct
response to KASPER.

Trying to stop the heroin epidemic by denying prescription painkillers is like trying to fix dehydration by denying liquids.

Back on March 10th, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 in a 94-1 roll call. (I wrote about the effort to pass that bill here).

You
would think that a bill that can get 94 votes in the Senate (with only
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska dissenting) should be able to pass
in the House. But it’s not a sure thing for the precise reason you
might guess.

SNIP

Still, other largely partisan differences could complicate passage of any House-altered version of the Senate’s bill.

That’s
because Republicans and Democrats agree that the country’s opioid drug
abuse epidemic affects most states and districts, but a House hearing
just before the recess period began exposed partisan rifts over key
factors driving the addiction epidemic problem.

Democrats
largely link the uptick in prescription painkiller-related deaths to a
lack of access to treatment and drugs designed to prevent overdoses. But
House Oversight and Government Reform Republicans see the root problems
as subpar efforts to stop drug traffickers, laws making marijuana
illegal, and fewer drug-related prosecutions.

Like I said, they're both wrong. Stop threatening doctors, stop demonizing drugs and stop denying relief to people in pain.

The
top official in charge of complaints at the Cabinet for Health and
Family Services was fired one business day after he said he warned his
bosses that people were so angry over problems with a new public
benefits system that he feared some might become violent, endangering
state workers.

Hundreds of callers have
grown increasingly frustrated over the abrupt loss of benefits such
as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also
known as food stamps, said Norman "Chip" Ward, the former executive
director of the cabinet's ombudsman's office.

"I expressed my concern that something bad was going to happen," Ward said in an interview Monday,
adding he was worried an angry client might visit a local state benefit
office and become violent. "It was really reaching a boiling point."

Among the cabinet officials Ward said he notified of his concerns on March 18
were Secretary Vickie Yates Glisson; Tim Feeley, deputy
secretary; Adria Johnson, the commissioner of the Department for
Community Based Services, which handles public benefits; and Steve
Davis, the cabinet's chief of staff.

If you won't solve the problem - especially when said solving involves admitting you were fucking wrong and Steve Beshear was fucking right - then kill the messenger.

I figure the over-under on how soon after engineers warn Bevin of the danger that a massive infrastructure collapse kills hundreds of Kentuckians is six months.

The
teenage mother who police say killed her newborn girl last summer told
police in an interview she gave birth to the child unexpectedly and then
smothered her.

Visiting her grandmother who was ill at Jewish Hospital on July 22, then-15-year-old Jasmine Wade felt something in her stomach. She went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and gave a slight push, she said.

“Something just came out, and I had looked down and … it was a baby,” she tells them and begins to cry.

She picked her up and held the child in her hands.

“I
didn’t believe it was happening,” she told the two Louisville Metro
Police detectives interviewing her from her hospital bed later that day,
as detailed in police evidence recently filed in Jefferson Circuit
Court by prosecutors.

SNIP

“Why did u kill her” the friend asked.

“I had to. i had no choice.”

Precisely. Governor Lying Coward closed the only place in Kentucky that offered education, contraception and early abortion to low-income teenage girls. Planned Parenthood would have saved her by helping her avoid pregnancy or by ending it by removing a microscopic clump of cells.

Instead, we have a dead infant and and might-as-well-be-dead-teenager, who will be spending the rest of her life in prison.

Meanwhile, a Kentucky woman with a much-wanted and cherished pregnancy is faced with the likelihood of giving birth to a microcephalic "infant," which has no chance at a remotely human life.

The Kentucky Department of Health says it has confirmed the state's third case of the Zika virus in a pregnant woman.

A statement from the agency on Friday
said the woman, who is from the Louisville area, tested positive for
the disease after traveling to Central America in recent months. She has
recovered from the illness.

The mosquito-borne virus, which is spreading in Latin America and the Caribbean, normally causes only mild symptoms.

Health
officials are investigating whether there is a link between Zika
infections in pregnant women and a rare birth defect called
microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.

That means profound permanent retardation rendering them unable to ever feed, clothe or clean themselves, much less communicate.

Unless that woman has private insurance and a rational, non-freakazoid doctor, she's in for a lifetime nightmare.

Republican
Gov. Mike Pence has signed a bill making Indiana the second state to
ban abortions because of fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down
syndrome.

Yes, there is an alternative to these horrors. Encourage more new doctors like this one, who is determined to fulfill her Hippocratic Oath by providing abortions.

We live in a country where roughly half of all pregnancies are unplanned, so there are, unsurprisingly, many women who become pregnant and choose not to give birth. We know that about one in three women will have an abortion by age 45.
Is this number, as some have argued, too high? In the 1990s, the
Clinton administration popularized the notion that abortion ought to be
"safe, legal, and rare." I understand this sentiment, but I think this
misses the point. There are a great number of ways to reduce abortion
rates. Some of which, as I would argue we have seen in the past couple
of decades, do not promote the health and reproductive autonomy of
women.

Moreover, insisting single-mindedly
that abortion should be "rare" further stigmatizes the one in three
women who will make this decision. From a public health perspective, the
end-all objective should not be to reduce abortion rates, but instead
to further empower more women to make informed reproductive choices.

This
may seem like a trivial distinction, but it is the difference between
an agenda that conforms women's health to socially accepted standards
and an agenda that truly promotes the health of women.

Freethought is “a philosophical viewpoint which holds that positions
regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and
empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, revelation, or other
dogma”, and as I’ve said repeatedly, it is not a pointless label for
thinking whatever you want (everyone gets to do that,
whether you’re a hidebound Catholic or Islamist, or an atheist
scientist). So I’m a little skeptical when someone confuses freethought
with freedom to think any damn thing.

Fracking
is not good for the climate. Or, to put it a tad more scientifically,
“By The Time Natural Gas Has A Net Climate Benefit You’ll Likely Be Dead
And The Climate Ruined,” as I wrote two years ago.

New satellite data and surface observations analyzed by Harvard researchers confirm previous data and observations:
U.S. methane emissions are considerably higher than the official
numbers from the EPA. Significantly, the EPA numbers are mostly based on
industry-provided estimates, not actual measurements.

While
this new study doesn’t attribute a specific source to the remarkable 30
percent increase in U.S. methane emissions from 2002–2014, many other studies have identified the source of those emissions as leakage of methane from the natural gas production and delivery system.

The central problem for the climate is that natural gas is mostly methane (CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period. That’s why many studies
find that even a very small leakage rate can have a large climate impact
— enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power
to gas for a long, long time.

Even worse,
other studies find — surprise, surprise — natural gas plants don’t
replace only high-carbon coal plants. They often replace very low carbon
power sources like solar, wind, nuclear, and even energy efficiency.
That means even a very low leakage rate wipes out the climate benefit of fracking.

Indeed, researchers confirmed in 2014
that — even if methane leakage were zero percent — “increased natural
gas use for electricity will not substantially reduce US GHG [greenhouse
gas] emissions, and by delaying deployment of renewable energy
technologies, may actually exacerbate the climate change problem in the
long term.” Exactly. In fact, a study just last month found that natural gas and renewables are competing directly with each other to replace coal plants in this country.

All
of these findings taken together vindicate the concerns of high leakage
rates raised by Cornell professors Howarth, Santoro and Ingraffea,
which I reported on back in 2011. Howarth told Climate Central
this week that the increase in methane emissions “almost certainly must
be coming from the fracking and from the increase in use of natural
gas.” Howarth notes that even with deep CO2 cuts, we’re headed toward
dangerous 2°C warming by mid-century.

“But
the planet responds much more rapidly to methane, so a reduction in
methane emissions now would slow the rate of global warming
immediately,” he said.

The good news is that renewables are ready
to handle the job of running a modern economy, so we don’t need to rely
on natural gas as a “bridge” to a carbon-free future. The bad news is
that many people still tout the supposed climate benefits of the
fracking revolution — despite a paucity of observations and analysis to
support that view and a plethora of data and research undermining it.

I
know that we here all know that the cause of the Civil War was 1)
slavery, 2) slavery, and 3) slavery. But Confederate apologists still
love to try and dodge that question through promoting the secondary
issues over which slavery caused tension to the forefront. Of course,
all you have to do to know the Civil War was about slavery is to read
almost anything written by Confederate elites between mid-1860 and April 1865. Heather Cox Richardson on Confederate VP Alexander Stephens:

Once
and for all, Stephens was going to explain the difference between the
United States and the Confederacy. That difference, he said, was
slavery. The American Constitution had a crucial defect at its heart, he
said. That defect was that it based the government on the principle
that humans were inherently equal. Confederate leaders had fixed that
problem. They had constructed a perfect government because they had
corrected the Founding Fathers’ error. The “cornerstone” on which the
Confederate government rested was racial slavery.

Stephens
explained that Thomas Jefferson himself had warned that slavery would
ultimately split the Union. But, he said, Jefferson had blundered. Like
other statesmen of his era, the Virginia president had believed that
slavery was evil, that it was “wrong in principle, socially, morally,
and politically.” The Founding Fathers believed that, while the nation
was temporarily stuck with slavery, the institution would not last. In
their minds, human equality was an eternal truth, and they assumed that
this principle would eventually triumph, somehow, even if they could not
themselves see how it would happen. This fundamental principle,
Stephens claimed, was wrong, and their error had made them create a
dangerously shaky government. It was an error the Confederacy had
addressed.

Stephens explained. In contrast to
the government the Founding Fathers had created, the Confederacy rested
on the “great truth” that

the negro is not
equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race
is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the
first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical,
philosophical, and moral truth.

The
Confederacy, Stephens said, was a pioneer nation, the first ever to make
a government that strictly conformed to God’s racial laws. Other
nations would certainly follow, for eventually all would have to
acknowledge “the truths upon which our system rests.”

The
United States of Abraham Lincoln’s era, he said, in contrast, continued
to suffer from the errors of the past. Northerners clung to the
outdated idea that “the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is
entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man.” But that
foundational principle of human equality was simply wrong. God had made
racial inequality an eternal truth. Trying to build a government without
slavery flew in the face of “the ordinance of the Creator.”

Stephens
was convinced that the United States, with its quaint ideas about human
equality, was antiquated, while the Confederacy stood on the side of
Providence and progress. Theirs was not a vision of an agrarian world
rapidly passing away as western countries modernized, but of the future.
Stephens dismissed the naysayers who warned that the “civilized world”
would stand against a nation based on racial slavery. “When we stand
upon the eternal principles of truth,” he said, “if we are true to
ourselves and the principles for which we contend, we are obliged to,
and must triumph.”

Why did the
South quickly turn to not talking about slavery after 1865? Because, as
Richardson points out, the political needs of Reconstruction dictated a
rhetorical shift.

When
the officers of the Freedmen’s Bureau—as it was dubbed—decided in favor
of former slaves about 68% of the time, angry white southerners howled.
This was precisely what they had gone to war to prevent, they said. The
Freedmen’s Bureau was a federal bureau administered by the military, and
its officers were intruding directly into their communities and siding
with former slaves. If this wasn’t the overreach of tyrants intending to
destroy liberty, what was? With slavery gone, former Confederates
turned to the politics of the moment. They harnessed nostalgia for the
fallen Confederacy to try to end the power of Republicans in Congress to
dictate the terms of Reconstruction.

But in Savannah in March 1861,
Alexander Stephens had told a different story. “The new constitution
has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our
peculiar institution,” he said. And then he clarified: “This was the
immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”

A few days after President BarackObama’s historic visit to Cuba, an arguably bigger rock star played Havana.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans flocked to a massive sports complex in
central Havana on Friday night for a free Rolling Stones concert that
some compared to Woodstock.

A festival atmosphere prevailed at
the show, with thousands sprawling on blankets in the grass and some
stripping off layers of clothing in the humid Havana night. Many climbed
fences and crowded onto nearby rooftops to get a better view of Mick
Jagger and his bandmates, who kicked off the show with a booming version
of “Jumpin' Jack Flash,” one of the band’s earliest hits.

“We
all wanted to be at Woodstock,” said Nilda Dominguez, 60, who said that
as a teenager she struggled to get her hands on music by the Stones and
other bands because Cuba’s revolutionary leaders looked down on rock
music. “Tonight is the best.”

Jagger, who wore a sparkly pink
jacket over a tight black T-shirt, alluded repeatedly to the historical
significance of the concert, at one point looking out at the roaring
crowd during a break in the music and pulling the microphone up to his
pillowy lips.

“We know in the past it wasn’t easy to hear our
music in Cuba,” Jagger said in halting Spanish tinged with a cockney
accent. “I think that finally the times are changing.”

Thursday, March 24, 2016

This is what you get when you let people who made billions in "business" ripping off consumers and investors into public office: they think they can just fire public employees as if they were personal servants.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

A judge has denied a request by Gov. Matt Bevin’s
administration to temporarily close a Lexington abortion clinic that the
state claims is operating illegally.

Fayette Circuit
Judge Ernesto Scorsone ruled Friday against the state’s request for an
injunction to close EMW Women’s Clinic on Burt Road. He said the Cabinet
for Health and Family Services failed to present adequate evidence
during a hearing Wednesday that it will eventually prevail in the
lawsuit or that allowing the clinic to remain open as the lawsuit
proceeds would cause “irreparable injury.”

“In addition
to the evidence indicating that EMW is operating legally and in
conformity with the most important regulations of a licensed abortion
facility, closing the clinic is against the public interest,” Scorsone
wrote. “EMW is the only physician’s office that routinely provides
abortion services in the Eastern half of the state, and both parties
agree that a right to an abortion during the first trimester of
pregnancy is constitutionally protected. Closing EMW would have a
severe, adverse impact on the women in the Eastern part of the state.”

The state sued the clinic two weeks ago, alleging that it lacked a required state license. The clinic stopped performing abortions on March 9 pending a judge’s ruling.

ADVERTISING

Scott White, an attorney representing the clinic, said it would reopen next week.

Judge Scorsone, who spent decades in the General Assembly being routinely disrespected for his liberal principles before coming out as gay in 2003, knows from motherfuckers who try to deny human rights to people who aren't white and male and straight.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Why doesn't Merrick Garland figure out a way to quietly leak the notion that he's opposed to abortion and thinks Roe v. Wade
is bad law? He has no track record on abortion, so it would seem
perfectly plausible. That would really put Republicans in a tough spot,
wouldn't it?

No, Kevin, it would only
prove once again that women's health and women's rights mean absolutely
nothing to anybody with political power.

And
what the fuck Garland has no track record on abortion? He's been on the MOST IMPORTANT
appellate court in the nation for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS. You can't tell
me that he's never had an abortion case come up. Something stinks.

Martin
Longman has a lot of good points here, but he completely missed the
boat on the strange silence about Garland's position on abortion.

I've
been politically aware for more than 43 years, since before Roe v.
Wade, and I am sick and fucking tired of Democratic presidents running
in terror away from any potential Supreme Court Justice who thinks women
are sentient human beings who should have control over their own
bodies. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks some restrictions are OK, when
any restriction at all denies that women are adults who can make their
own decisions.

Just fucking
once I'd like a president to nominate for the Supreme Court someone who
loudly and proudly insists that it is the responsibility of the federal
government to provide free, no-questions-asked, no-restrictions,
available-on-every-corner Abortion On Demand for every woman who wants
one. Or several dozen.

And no, that president is not Hillary Clinton. But it might be Bernie Sanders.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Yes,
that is exactly the consequence of this unbelievably stupid policy.

We
have a heroin epidemic in this country for one reason and one reason
only: doctors have been violating their Hippocratic Oaths by refusing to
prescribe effective painkillers to patients in chronic pain. Those
desperate patients go to the only place left to find pain relief: heroin
dealers.

The
guidelines recommend what many addiction experts have long called for —
that doctors first try ibuprofen and aspirin to treat pain, and that opioid treatment for short-term pain last for three days, and rarely longer than seven. That is far less than current practice, in which patients are often given two weeks or a month worth of pills.

The
guidelines are meant for primary care doctors, who prescribe about half
of all opioids but often have little training in how to use them. They call for patients to be urine tested before getting prescriptions
and for doctors to check prescription drug tracking systems to make sure
patients are not secretly getting medicine somewhere else. Currently,
49 states have such systems, but only 16 require that doctors use them,
according to experts at Brandeis University.

Denying pain relief to people in pain is the one and only thing that created the heroin epidemic. Stopping the torture of people in pain is the only thing that will end it.

Kentucky House Democrats used their reinforced majority to reject nearly half of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's budget cuts Tuesday
while still managing to fully fund required contributions to the
state's struggling public pension systems without borrowing money.

The House Appropriations and Revenue committee approved a two-year state spending plan Tuesday, with the full House scheduled to vote on the plan Wednesday.
Most Republicans on the committee voted "pass," meaning they did not
vote for or against the bill. Rep. Jim Stewart of Flat Lick was the only
Republican to vote "yes."

Bevin, the state's
second Republican governor in four decades, quickly declared the state
was in a financial disaster less than two months after taking office and
called for $650 million in spending cuts in his first budget proposal.
The reductions included a 4.5 percent cut this year and 9 percent cuts
in each of the next two years, with a lot of that money coming from the
state's public colleges and universities.

College
presidents revolted, calling the cuts "draconian" and warning about
massive tuition increases, program cuts and, in one instance, possible
closure if the cuts were approved. Bevin did not relent, telling a crowd
of community college supporters in the Capitol rotunda that "the cuts
have to come from somewhere" and declaring as recently as last week he
would not sign a budget that did not include the cuts.

But
Democrats ran against Bevin's budget cuts in a series of special
elections last week, winning three of the four seats to give them a
53-47 majority in the House. It takes 51 votes to pass a budget. Tuesday, they rejected all of Bevin's cuts to colleges and universities.

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes touted the state’s new online registration system, GoVoteKy.com, Monday at a news conference in the Capitol Rotunda.

Grimes,
the state's chief election official, said Kentucky voters also can use
the system to change their existing registration information, such as
political party affiliation.

Before, Kentuckians had to register to vote or change voting information by mail or in person using voter registration cards.

The new system will be more convenient, said Grimes, noting that 30 states already have online registration.

The system was activated March 1.

“Already, a 93-year-old went online to update her registration,” Grimes said.

Jefferson
County Clerk Bobbie Holsclaw, who attended the news conference, said
about 100,000 voters in Jefferson County have used the new system in the
last 10 days to either register or to update their registration.

Bevin to file a lawsuit against online registrants in 3, 2 ....

Good job, Alison. Now let's establish vote-by-mail and turn this state blue again.

Monday, March 14, 2016

As I mentioned this morning, today is the anniversary of the Fukushima
disaster in Japan, which resulted in tens of thousands dead, tens of
thousands more displaced, and a nuclear plant meltdown that will
continue to cause detrimental environmental effects for generations.

The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima's
nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean "ice wall" around the
crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has
yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t know how to dispose of
highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks
around the site.

Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a
10-meter high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were
killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods in
the quake and tsunami.

Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has
proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the
extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods, weighing hundreds of
tonnes. Five robots sent into the reactors have failed to return.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) has made some
progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged
building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the
melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been
developed.

“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant,"
Naohiro Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in an interview.
"The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”

The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors,
and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is
so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim
under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to
search for the melted fuel rods.

But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys
their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda
said.

Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.

And so the cleanup will continue, probably for the rest of the lives of
the people there working to decontaminate the site now. It's a massive
environmental disaster that should have been the end, worldwide, of
nuclear power technology. It's not. And there are hundreds more
potential Fukushima meltdowns waiting to happen. We do this to
ourselves and see the results, and we still do it.

We only get one planet, and we've killed it multiple times over.

But wait! Nuclear power gets worse. As has been true from the birth of nuclear power, nuke plants are never, ever, EVER cost-effective. They always cost more and charge their customers more than any other kind of electricity generation - even solar and wind in the infancy of those technologies when they cost a mint, but nuclear cost a dozen mints.

But don't be relieved - there's one way to make nuclear energy economical: make the government - that would be you and me as taxpayers, but not the profit-taking nuke industry - subsidize it.Joe Romm at Think Progress:

In the modern era, nuclear power plants have almost always become
more and more expensive over time. They have a “negative learning curve”
— along with massive delays and cost overruns in market economies. This
is confirmed both by recent studies and by the ongoing cost escalations
of nuclear plants around the world, as I’ll detail in this post.

The cost escalation curse of nuclear power

“Ever since the completion of the first wave of nuclear reactors in
1970, and continuing with the ongoing construction of new reactors in
Europe, nuclear power seems to be doomed with the curse of cost
escalation,” read one 2015 journal article, “Revisiting the Cost Escalation Curse of Nuclear Power.”

In the United States, the cost of Georgia Power’s newest twin Vogtle
reactors may top initial estimates of $14 billion and reach $21 billion,
according to recent Georgia Public Service Commission testimony. Of
course, the first two Vogtle Units begun in 1971 took 18 years to build
(a decade over schedule) at a final price of $9 billion — ten times the
original price tag. BloombergBusiness wrote last fall, “Even as sympathetic an observer as John Rowe [former chair of the U.S.’s largest nuclear utility] warns that the new units at Vogtle will be uneconomical when — or if — they’re completed.”

Saturday, March 12, 2016

The (republican presidential) candidates all seem to think that "being politically incorrect" is that same as "I get to be an asshole without consequences." That is an idiot's understanding of political correctness, which really means, "Act like we live in a civilized society where people are genuinely equal."

If we really are facing a massive loss of jobs in the future, the only
way we're going to get anything from the people taking those jobs away
is if we're threatening to burn their mansions to the ground. We
shouldn't assume they have any common decency. If that future comes,
they'll be happy to let us die in the streets -- as long as they don't
have to see us doing it.

Literally kill them. This isn't reducing paperwork. This is taking oxygen tanks and fire-resistant clothes away from firefighters. Safety inspections are the only thing standing between miners and death.

On Wednesday, the 40th anniversary of the Scotia coal mine explosions in Letcher County that killed 26 people, a Senate committee passed two bills to roll back the state’s mine-safety laws.

Senate Bill 297 would end state safety inspections of coal mines, leaving the task to federal inspectors. Senate Bill 224
would end mandatory state safety training for mine foremen, giving coal
companies the option of offering their own training for foremen to save
money.

The votes came 40 years to the hour
after an explosion caused by the build-up of coal dust and methane
rocked the Scotia mine near the Oven Fork community. Two days after the
blast, a second explosion occurred. The death toll was 26 miners and
mine inspectors; faulty equipment and inadequate ventilation were
blamed.

SNIP

Only one lawmaker, Sen. Ray Jones,
D-Pikeville, voted against Girdler’s bill. Jones said the language
would leave state mine safety analysts without legal authority to issue
citations, shut down a mine or file a report with their superiors if
they witnessed dangerous problems while in a mine. State mine inspectors
tend to be more knowledgeable and thorough than their federal
counterparts, Jones said.

Mine safety
analysts should not have to remain passive, simply offering
recommendations, in the face of serious violations, Jones said.

“There would be no enforcement mechanism,” Jones said. “I think this bill may go a little bit too far on the safety issue.”

Jones isn't the only state senator representing coal miners, just the only one willing to stand up to the industry and the repug nihilists.

Friday, March 11, 2016

What's the opposite of coattails in an election? That's what Matt Bevin's filming-the-empty-House-chamber did for Tuesday's special elections. Instead of handing control of the state House to repugs for the first time in 90 years, his stunt managed to give three of four seats to the dems, increasing their majority to six.

Funny how voters don't respond to billionaire bullying the way exploited workers do.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Keeping up its coordinated offensive aimed at abortion
providers, the Kentucky Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would put
new restrictions on abortion clinics.

The measure is part
of a series of bills passed in recent weeks by the Republican-led
Senate that would add conditions on providers before abortions are
performed and strengthen oversight of clinics.

SNIP

Derek Selznick, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky,
said in a statement Wednesday that the bill was "another attempt to shut
down access to safe and legal abortions in the commonwealth."

Selznick said the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a case involving a similar law.
"It
is unfortunate the Senate decided to move legislation forward that is
already under question by our nation's highest court," he said.

As Notorious RBG made clear in eviscerating the Forced Birth forces during those arguments, these TRAP laws have nothing to do with health and safety and everything to do with old male perverts getting their rocks off regulating female sexuality.

Democrats won three of four House seats up for grabs in
Tuesday’s special election, increasing their majority status in the
House chamber by one for the rest of the 2016 General Assembly,
including the all-important process of writing the next state budget.

The
House will have 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans through the fall
elections. It is the final state legislative chamber in the South to
remain in Democratic control, and it is the last bastion of Democratic
Party power in Kentucky, which otherwise has been trending Republican in
state and federal elections.

SNIP

Kentucky Democratic Party chairwoman Sannie Overly, a state
representative from Paris, said the Democratic victories Tuesday were “a
repudiation of Gov. Bevin’s efforts to dismantle public education and
health care.

“Trying to dismantle Kynect, which has helped more
than half a million Kentuckians obtain health insurance, is a perfect
example of the bad decisions Bevin is making that will hurt the people
of the commonwealth,” Overly said. “These Democrats won because they are
all good leaders — and they will serve Kentucky well. Tonight is not
just a victory for them, but it is a victory for every Kentuckian.”

House
Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said Democrats won because they
stood up “for education, health care, for protecting senior citizens.”

He
added: “These elections tonight clearly show the House Democratic
agenda, especially protecting public education and making kids
work-ready for the 21st century, is accepted by voters in Kentucky in
the east, in the west and Central Kentucky.”

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Shame on you, Herald-Leader. You've just lost your right to claim First Amendment for anything, after refusing to defend your Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist's completely accurate and fair depiction of how Governor Lying Coward is destroying the commonwealth.

Monday, March 7, 2016

One dead body and three almost dead. Granted, the first may turn out to be "justified," but given that the one who survived is a "constable," which in Kentucky is an elected official empowered to serve warrants but not required to undergo any type of education or training, I'd be amazed if it were genuinely unavoidable.

Lexington Police say it appears a man accidentally shot his friend while cleaning a gun.

It
happened around 7:30 p.m. Friday in an apartment on Trent Boulevard,
according to investigators. Police say the man who was shot was taken to
UK Hospital with serious injuries. Police say the victim was able to
communicate with investigators. No names were released.

The
shooter was questioned by police. Investigators say preliminarily, the
shooting appears to be an accident. The incident remains under
investigation.

Progressives of faith will declare, firmly and forcefully, that Donald Trump in the White House means more for those that already have and less for those
who barely have anything, more discrimination on the basis of race and
religion, more women being harassed and harangued by misogynist men
who see Trump as their role model. It means more injustice, more
ignorance, more intolerance. It means America abandoning its best
values…which is why progressives of faith cannot and will not let Donald
Trump destroy America’s melting-pot legacy.

Yes, they will. "Progressives of faith" will do what they have always done, which is wring their hands and whine and moan and stand aside while the forces of hate run roughshod over American Democracy.

Is there any doubt that
America’s worst governor would be the perfect partner for the 2016
Republican nominee? Snyder’s handling of the Flint water crisis
succinctly symbolizes the GOP’s vision of government: penny-pinching,
cold, scornful of the weak and vulnerable, operating with reckless
disregard for future generations. The Republican base wants a truly
conservative ticket: a Trump-Snyder or Cruz-Snyder pairing would deliver
that dream.

Ever notice that Snyder doesn’t
seem to have any real remorse or sorrow for his actions towards Flint’s
residents? His “apology” in his January 19
State of the State address was a pathetic joke, one that failed to
convince any sentient American. Snyder never gave a damn about the
residents of Flint, and still doesn’t. The Snyder vision—the Republican
vision—is that if you don’t have money, you’re not really a citizen.

Eight years ago, in an interview with Thomas Frank about President George W. Bush’s failures, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow observed:

[T]his
is a problem of conservatism. This is a problem of letting people run
government when they believe that government can’t work and ought not
work.No wonder Maddow has been so outraged by Snyder’s
human-rights abuses, as we all should be. Maddow understands that Snyder
is conservatism. He is continuing the dark tradition Ronald Reagan gave
birth to 35 years ago when he declared, “Government is not the solution
to our problem; government is the problem.”

Yet
government is not the problem per se. Government run by people who hate
government is the problem. Government run by people who regard certain
citizens as worthless moochers undeserving of the basic necessities of
life is the problem.

We hear so much about the
compassion so many Americans feel for the victimized residents of Flint.
Yet we must acknowledge the sad reality that there are far too many
Americans who simply don’t give a damn about the residents of Flint…who
couldn’t care less that they’re drinking contaminated water…who turn a
blind eye, a deaf ear and a cold heart to those whose health has been
damaged for life as a result of Snyder’s deranged decision-making.

Those
are the very same Americans who are embracing the hate-filled messages
of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Those are the very same Americans who
probably think Snyder is the real victim in the Flint crisis—the victim,
of course, of “political correctness,” “race hustlers” and the “liberal
media.”

Recall the repulsive running mates
Republicans have selected over the decades. Richard Nixon in 1952. Spiro
Agnew in 1968. Dan Quayle in 1988. Dick Cheney in 2000. Sarah Palin in
2008. Paul Ryan in 2012. Considering this track record, would Snyder
really be that far-fetched of a choice?

Think about what animates the right today:
Contempt for the mainstream media. Contempt for racial minorities.
Contempt for government. Contempt for those outside of the right-wing
tribe. Snyder would appeal to all of the right’s darkest impulses:
selecting him as VP would be the ultimate bleep-you to progressives, the
“political establishment” and the Fourth Estate. I wouldn’t put the
selection of Snyder past this radicalized and reckless Republican Party.
Would you?

It's about racism, because everything in this country is about racism. Always has been, always will be. (paceCharlie Pierce.)

Lexington has an unlicensed abortion clinic that should be closed until
it receives a license from the state, the administration of Gov. Matt
Bevin claims in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Fayette Circuit Court.

ACLU of Kentucky executive director Michael Aldridge said he was
“deeply concerned about the increasingly hostile climate around access
to abortion in our commonwealth.”

“Safe and legal abortions are
already difficult for many Kentucky women to access, with only two
clinics in Louisville and Lexington,” he said. “Through lawsuits and a
string of anti-abortion bills this legislative session constitutional
rights are being eroded under the guise of ‘women’s safety.’”

KentuckyOne Health, which operates the University of
Louisville Hospital, has backed out of an agreement to provide Planned
Parenthood patients emergency care in case complications arise during an
abortion.

Planned Parenthood attorney Thomas Clay said
that the organization was told Tuesday by hospital officials that they
were under pressure to terminate the agreement, and that the hospital's
state funding was threatened. Clay said the hospital declined to say
exactly where the pressure came from.

Funny how Governor Faux Libertarian is perfectly fine with Big Gubmint stomping its jackboots all over private business when it fits his freakazoid agenda.

Now, eight years later,
unemployment is down, interest rates are under control, and inflation is
in check. But the overall labor participation rate is very low, and the
skills gap is wider than ever. In fact, the latest numbers are out, and
they are astonishing. According to the Department of Labor, America now
has 5.6 million job openings.
Forget your politics for a moment, and consider the enormity of
what’s happening here. Millions of people who have stopped looking for
work, are ignoring 5.6 million genuine opportunities. That’s not a
polemic, or a judgment, or an opinion. It’s a fact. And so is this: most
of those 5.6 million opportunities don’t require a diploma – they require require a skill.

Unfortunately, the skilled trades are no longer aspirational in these
United States. In a society that’s convinced a four-year degree is the
best path for the most people, a whole category of good jobs have been
relegated to some sort of “vocational consolation prize.” Is it any
wonder we have 1.3 trillion dollars in outstanding student loans? Is it
really a surprise that vocational education has pretty much evaporated
from high schools? Obviously, the number of available jobs and the
number of unemployed people are not nearly as correlated as most people
assume.

I’m no economist, but the skills gap doesn’t seem all that mysterious
– it seems like a reflection of what we value. Five and half million
unfilled jobs is clearly a terrible drag on the economy and a sad
commentary of what many people consider to be a “good job,” but it also
represents a tremendous opportunity for anyone willing to learn a trade
and apply themselves.

Part of the problem is also that the licensing agencies for plumbers and electricians set rules to ensure that there is always a shortage of licensed plumbers and electricians, thus keeping prices high.

I think skilled workers of all kinds should be paid commensurate with their skills, and licensing agencies should stop distorting the market with protectionist rules.

And I think no one, regardless of education or wealth, should look down on anyone who does a needed job well.

A federal judge has found that a Kentucky police officer used
unreasonable force when he shot an unarmed, intoxicated man with
cognitive disabilities as he staggered along a railroad track, refusing
to take his hand out of his pants and disobeying officers' orders.

U.S.
District Court Judge Joseph H. McKinley's ruling came in a civil case
filed by the man's family against the city of Bowling Green and several
officers involved. His finding that Officer Keith Casada's decision to
shoot 46-year-old Gregory Harrison was "objectively unreasonable" means
the lawsuit can move forward toward trial.

An attorney for
Harrison's family hailed the ruling as a symbol that judges and juries,
for decades hesitant to blame officers for killing civilians, are no
longer willing to ignore brutality after a string of high-profile cases
across the country. The city's attorney criticized it as "a 20/20
hindsight" decision that failed to factor in the split-second decisions
officers often must make. Both the officer and the man killed were
white.

So, Mr. Bowling Green City Attorney, a cop can shoot and kill anyone for any reason as long as the cop does so in a "split-second."

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Don't touch anything in the Kentucky state legislative chambers. There is jizz everywhere.

Because the only possible justification for requiring medically unnecessary ultrasounds - that would be a plastic probe shoved up a woman's vagina against her will, also known as object rape* - is as an excuse for public masturbation by the misogynistic freakazoids Kentucky elected to office.

About Me

"Blue" in Blue in the Bluegrass refers to my politics, not my state of mind, although being progressive-democratic in Kentucky is not for the faint of heart.
The Bluegrass Region of Kentucky is Central Kentucky, the area around Lexington. It's also sometimes known as the Golden Triangle, the region formed by Louisville in the west, Cincinnati in the north and Lexington in the east-south corner. This is the most economically advanced, politically progressive and aesthically beautiful area of the state. Also the most overpopulated by annoying yuppies and the most endangered by urban sprawl.
A Yellow Dog Democrat is one who will vote for even a yellow dog if it is running as a Democrat. I can't claim to be quite that fanatically partisan, especially since quite a few candidates who run as Democrats in Kentucky are more Republican than a lot of Republicans I can name.
But I do love the story Kentucky House leader Rocky Adkins never tires of telling about the old-timer in Eastern Kentucky who was once accused of being willing to vote for Satan if Satan ran as a Democrat. Spat back the old-timer:
"Not in a primary, I wouldn't!"
Amen.